]
When the Marin officers found out we were the same people that had
worked with them at Melle five months before, they invited my wife and
three other nurses to luncheon in a Nieuport cellar. Their eye brightens
at sight of a woman, but she is as safe with them as with a cowboy or a
Quaker. The guests were led down into a basement, an eighteen foot room,
six feet high. The sailors had covered the floor and papered the walls
with red carpet. A tiny oil stove added to the warmth of that blazing
carpet. More than twenty officers and doctors crowded into the room, and
took seats at the table, lighted by two lamps. There were a dozen plates
of _patisserie_, a choice of tea, coffee, or chocolate, all hot, white
and red wine, and then champagne. An orderly lifted in a little wooden
yacht, bark-rigged, fourteen inches long, with white painted sails. A
nurse spilled champagne over the tiny ship, till it was drenched, and
christened. The chief doctor made a speech of thanks. Then the ship went
around the table, and each guest wrote her name on the sails. The party
climbed out into the garden, where the shells were going high overhead
like snowballs. In amongst the blackened flowers, a 16-inch shell had
left a hole of fifty feet diameter. One could have dropped two motor
cars into the cavity.
Who but Marins would have devised a celebration for us on July 4? The
commandant, the captain, and a brace of lieutenants opened eleven
bottles of champagne in the Cafe du Sport at Coxyde in honor of our
violation of neutrality.
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